


By Any Other Name

by waketosleep



Category: Dollhouse, Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, cliche bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-20
Updated: 2010-04-20
Packaged: 2017-10-09 01:30:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/81526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waketosleep/pseuds/waketosleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonard McCoy is a good doctor. He was made that way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By Any Other Name

**Author's Note:**

> So this is kind of fucked up; I readily admit this. Totally counting this as a weird crossover for Cliché Bingo; why not? If you're not familiar with Dollhouse going into this fic, you may wish to brush up not only on the show's premise but on the happenings of the doll November.

It's the middle of Gamma shift, and McCoy is sitting in his office in the back of Sickbay with two fingers of bourbon and a PADD, going over Medical requisition reports from the past week. It's nice and quiet, almost relaxing. When his terminal beeps and shatters the silence, he almost wants to throw his drink at it.

The alert is for an incoming subspace transmission from Jocelyn; he wants to throw his drink at the terminal even more, but instead he knocks back the rest of it to brace himself, and then opens the message. Her voice is calm and measured, as usual, when she speaks.

"There are three flowers in a vase. The third flower is green."

He blinks. Typical Jocelyn bullshit. He puts down his PADD and gets up to leave his office.

Jim answers his door with a grin. "Hey, Bones." He steps aside, allowing entrance to his cabin. "Thought you were working. 'Fuck off, Jim, and don't bug me tonight, I mean it'," he says in a deep, gruff voice.

Jim turns away to walk to the couch and it only takes a second to shake the hypospray loose from his sleeve and inject it in Jim's neck.

"What—" Jim shouts as he falls, his hand to his neck.

He stares up from the floor, gasps, his breath rattling. He's still alive, barely; he peers upward through mostly-shut eyelids, his mouth opening and closing silently because he's beyond words and will soon be beyond breathing, too.

The terminal on Jim's desk beeps.

"There are three flowers in a vase," says a calm, female voice over the comm system. "The third flower is yellow."

McCoy blinks. He's in Jim's quarters, for some reason. Jim is on the floor; the bottom drops out of McCoy's stomach and he stumbles across the room, falling to his knees at Jim's side.

"What happened?" he demands. "Jim!" He slaps lightly at Jim's cheeks, trying to keep him awake.

Jim stares up at him and blinks once, slowly. His mouth opens and closes once; his breath is shallow.

The door opens and there's Chapel. "Thank fuck," McCoy says. "I don't know what happened."

She looks down at Jim. "I'll call a team," she says calmly.

"Don't just stand there!" McCoy barks.

"Leonard," she says, "are you ready for your treatment?"

He stops clenching at Jim's shoulder. "If you think it'll help Jim," he says slowly, uncertainly.

She holds out a hand. "We have to go, then, if you want to help. The shuttle's waiting."

He stops her in the corridor to use the comm unit in the wall anyway, paging an emergency team for Jim. "I hope they won't be too late," he says.

"Let's go, Leonard." She takes him by the arm and tugs him away, to the shuttle bay.

She pilots; he didn't know she could pilot a shuttle, but she does. He stares vaguely out the window at the emptiness, thinking about Jim. They go to Starbase 22, only ten hours away by shuttle. When they beam from the landing bay there to a warp-capable cruiser, though, he pauses.

"Where the hell are we going?"

"For your treatment," says Chapel. "Did you forget? Here," she says, when they reach their seats in the passenger area, "just sleep. We'll get there soon." He feels the press and hiss of a hypospray against his neck, and then the world fades away, soft.

He wakes up when she shakes his shoulder; they're disembarking onto transports to Earth. "Jim," he says. "Did you hear about his condition?"

"No," she says, "we're too far away. I'm sure he's fine."

She looks down and to the left as she says it, and McCoy wonders but won't press. He's tired and needs a treatment.

When they get to the building, another skyscraper among many others, he slows his steps. "I've been here before," he says, looking around.

"You remember? That was years ago," says Chapel, pulling him into the turbolift.

When he sees the chair, it clicks. "I took my screening physical for Starfleet here," he says, stopping in his tracks. "Why are we back here?"

"Little help," Chapel says to the other guy in the room, the one standing by the terminal.

Then there are three big guys standing around him, trying to get him to move to the chair, but McCoy won't go.

"You're fucking crazy," he says. "Where's Jim? I'm his physician, I need to know how he's doing! I should never have left!"

They grab him by the arms and legs and drag him to the chair, shoving him down.

"Just take your treatment, Doctor," Chapel gasps, her normally neat hair going in all directions.

The chair tilts back and then he can't move. He gasps; there's intense pain building at the base of his skull. Then time ceases to matter.

He blinks, and the nice man is smiling down at him.

"Hello, Romeo. How are you feeling?"

The lights overhead are very bright. He wishes someone would turn them down. "Did I fall asleep?"

"For a little while."

He thinks. "Shall I go now?"

The man steps away. "If you like."

 

THE END


End file.
